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Huck decisions Lebedev, but looks more like a loser

By Jason Kim: Now that I’ve gotten a chance to see the WBO cruiserweight clash between champion Marco Huck (31-1, 23 KO’s) and previously unbeaten Russian challenger Denis Lebedev (21-1, 16 KO’s) I finally know what all the fuss is about the bout. Huck, while fighting in his adopted country of Germany, defeated Lebedev by a 12 round split decision while fighting in front of a large pro-Huck crowd at the Max Schmeling Halle, Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, Germany. The two European judges scored the fight identically with 115-113 and 115-113, whereas the American judge scored it 116-112 for Lebedev. I personally had the fight scored 117-111 for Lebedev.

It wasn’t a very close fight from what I saw of it. I want to give the two European judges the benefit of the doubt in this fight. One thing that may have influenced them is that the German crowd would scream loudly every time Huck would attempt to throw a punch, but unfortunately most of the time Huck would badly miss with wild combinations that would hit only air. It didn’t matter to the German crowd.

They still cheered loudly each time. This is really only thing that I can think of that would have impressed the two judges to give decision to Huck. He wasn’t throwing enough punches in most of the rounds and merely moving around the ring while being stalked by Lebedev. Another thing I noticed was the referee was calling shots low by Lebedev when he was landing punches on Huck’s belt line. Twice the referee stopped action to give Lebedev stern warnings for punches that were perfectly legal right on the belt line.

Perhaps the referee couldn’t see the action, but it seemed pretty clear the shots were thrown into the black area of Huck’s trunks. The problem here is that the referee gave Lebedev a warning after the second called low blow in the 5th, telling him that was the last one he was going to be able to get away with. As it turns out, this had a dramatic affect on the fight because Lebedev stopped throwing body punches almost completely after that.

Previous to the needless warning, Lebedev had been badly hurting Huck with body shots in every round and had succeeded in injuring one of Huck’s ribs in the 4th. By warning Lebedev, he basically saved Huck from getting hit with additional shots to the midsection. However, I kind of doubt that the two European judges would have scored it any differently because they were scoring rounds for Huck in which he only landed four to five punches during the entire rounds. I don’t don’t understand that given that Lebedev was landing a lot of punches to the head of Huck in every round of the fight.

In the 12th round, it seemed peculiar that Huck’s trainer told him to stay away from Lebedev, as if he knew the fight was in the bag. As far as I can tell, it Lebedev looked to have a commanding lead at that point and it was Huck who needed a knockout to win. At any rate, Huck ran around the ring the entire 12th round doing very little. The German crowd still screamed wildly for every missed punch by Huck, which was many.